Diplomacy and International Politics

February 7, 2020: With the advent of the digital age and the rise of Russia and China as global powers, the EU must do more to defend itself and its relationship with the United States, according to Janne Kuusela, Director General Janne Kuusela. In an event moderated by  Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project and the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship he explained why Finland could be a potential paradigm for the EU’s defense strategy. 

Even if his administration ends on January 20, 2021 Donald Trump will have created a destructive legacy in foreign and domestic policy the depth of which is unrivalled in modern American history. In three short years, the president has done profound damage to the country’s international credibility and its capacity for moral suasion – key ingredients of the soft power that made it the anchor of liberal western world order of which it was the chief architect 70 years ago. The trauma of the Trump administration’s assault on postwar order will resonate beyond the (first) four years of any Democratic administration and will deepen dramatically, should he be re-elected in November.

US President Donald Trump has appointed Richard Grenell, US ambassador to Germany, as acting director of national intelligence. It's a sensitive post overseeing 17 US spy agencies and has traditionally been filled by an intelligence professional. The World's Marco Werman speaks with Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Director of the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship and the Future of Diplomacy Project, Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook speaks to WDR 5 on micro-multilateralism and the impact of urban diplomacy global diplomacy, particularly on climate change.

Several major tests and roadblocks are expected during the next several months, including whether the EU and China can agree on a bilateral investment agreement and whether European governments give the Chinese company Huawei contracts for building out 5G networks. Yet, despite the more assertive European approach, the EU remains keen on maintaining cordial relations with Beijing and ensuring strong continued business ties.

For decades, the Munich Security Conference served as a powerful symbol of the strength of the Western alliance. The 2020 installment offered a testament to its accelerating decline.

Director of the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship, Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook speaks to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung at the Munich Security Conference about the future of transatlantic relations and whether there needs to be a transatlantic security community.

NATO is neither “brain dead” nor in crisis.  Rather, the alliance is at a turning point much like others it has faced before in its seventy-year history.  Change is central to the story of how NATO has endured. 

Europe’s momentum in developing a clear-eyed approach toward China has stalled. In March 2019, the European Commission issued a white paper naming China a systemic rival and economic competitor. That publication marked a fundamental shift in how far European institutions were willing to go in raising the challenges China poses to Europe’s openness and prosperity.

PRIOR TO THE ELECTION OF DONALD TRUMP, and the current season of hand- wringing about democracy’s prospects for survival in the United States and Europe, Western social scientists tended to think of democracy as something “we” had achieved and “they”—that is, the peoples of the so-called developing world—had yet to grasp. The hypothesized reasons for this gap between “us” and “them” were many.